“There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic.

The boundary between them is not

clearly defined.” ― Albert Camus, in The Rebel

Growing up as a child, I was always fascinated by how things worked and I would
always pester my mum by asking her existential questions like, Is there a God? Why can’t I
see him? What happens when my pets die? And so on. My intriguing and questioning nature
wasn’t something unique in me but has been so in most individuals for centuries. After the
devastating effects of world war 2, countries such as Europe were trying to cope up with the
difficulties it had faced. Militarism and religion began to lose power and authority over the
people and these people began to speak up and ask existential questions. It was during this
time that the writings of philosophers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre began to
make sense in the minds of people. The Rebel by Camus was one such piece which causes a
lot of commotion in the minds of people.

Camus was a philosopher who wrote on various topics such as terrorism, moral
philosophy, death penalty etc. He believed in fighting injustice and in the notion of human
freedom. In the Rebel, a book-length essay published after world war 2 had ended, he voices
his opinions on the ideas of revolt and revolution and the people who carry out revolutions.
He spoke about the philosophy of revolt and how violence due to revolution was a bad thing.
He was against the atrocities committed by the USSR under the leadership of Stalin’s
communist party and hence moved away from the revolutionary ideologies of communism.

Camus found the idea of the communist party vexing as they presumed that the only
way to achieve an idealistic state where everyone was free, was through revolution. Through
this ideology, people could commit crimes and other atrocious activities and justify them in
the name of achieving the greater good. As Camus had mentioned “We are living in the era of
premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could
plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and they have a perfect alibi:
philosophy, which can be used for any purpose — even for transforming murderers into
judges” (Camus 3).

This meant that the law and the government would have little to no say when it came
to people committing a crime in the name of a greater good. Camus thus writes that, how in
this kind of revolution, heinous crimes would also get side-lined in the eyes of the law. This
is where he differentiated between crimes of passion and crimes of logic. In this type of
revolution, murders were not committed as sudden acts of defiance but were committed in the
name of ideologies in a well thought of manner. The people who committed these murders
were doing so to gain benefits for themselves and they would justify that the people who
were murdered were mere pawns in the larger picture of achieving total salvation, a state of
utopia. Camus believed that uncontrollable rebellion would lead to people becoming savages
and that they would not show any emotion towards fellow human beings.

As I was reading The Rebel, a lot of thoughts came to my mind, from war to crimes to
nihilism to terrorism. The question that struck me the most was how these principles and
ideologies were not only relevant back then but how they are pertinent in modern times too. I
have seen people murdering each other over trifle matters such as land, religious ideologies,
etc. The questions that come into mind are whether such ideologies are worth killing for?
Who gets to decide what’s right or wrong? Does justice even matter? These questions
become more relevant in recent times where there has been an increase in communal violence
around the world.

Communal violence has been a constant throughout India for a very long time. A few
years back in my city of Mangalore, a gang of 20 men stormed a pub and demanded women
to stop drinking because it was against their religious norms. When these women denied, they
were beaten up and dragged by their hair and kicked out of the pub. These men were part of
the RSS and proclaiming their slogan of “Jai Shri Ram” and mistreating everyone all in the
name of their god and their ideology. This is how a certain ideology can be misused to cause
havoc in society. There are other instances where the death toll due to riots are endless- The
Babri masjid massacre of 1992 and 1993 where about 900 people were killed and 2000
injured and the Nellie massacre of 1983 where 2000 Muslims were killed in north eastern
Assam as they were labelled foreigners. The concept of ideology has seeped so deep into the
minds of people that they see nothing wrong in it. We can see this through the beating up of
couples on valentine’s day by goons who have no authority whatsoever to do so but they still
hurt people in the name of their ideology and religion.

If this ideology keeps on working its way through the minds of people, it can lead to
serious issues which can, later on, become a tool for devastation. This is how totalitarian
regimes use ideologies to trick and influence the minds of individuals into working for a
cause which they in most cases do not need. A lot of times we can see how dominant political
parties rally people in the name of certain ideologies because they know they have the power
and wealth to do so and people blindly follow them without question. But it is not only the
dominant communities which cause violence in society in the name of ideologies but also the
opposing communities who do so to negate what the dominant communities have to say.
There is a constant bombardment of ideologies amongst the people and this leads to
confusion and chaos all around leading to more and more injustice in society.

As a result, when Camus says “there are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The
boundary between them is not clearly defined”, he is insinuating the fact that we should go
about questioning the motives and the extent to which an individual would go to rebel. The
more we go about searching for answers to this question, the more we will come to know that
what he says is actually true. I believe that to maintain a constant balance between the powers
of the state and the people, we must always ask the question that Camus hopes of us to ask, to
what limit will humans go for their cause.
 
Works Cited
Camus, Albert. The Rebel: an Essay on Man in Revolt. Vintage Books, 2008.

“A Quote by Albert Camus.” Goodreads, Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/quotes/4868-

there-are-crimes-of-passion-and-crimes-of-logic-the.

References
“Albert Camus.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Nov. 2020,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus.

btcphilosophy, Author. A Critical Analysis of Camus' The Rebel, 12 May 2017,

btcphilosophy.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/a-critical-analysis-of-camus-the-rebel/.

“The Rebel by Albert Camus (1951).” Books & Boots, 30 Sept. 2017,

astrofella.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/the-rebel-albert-camus/.

Grover, Priyamvada. “Camus' Questions Haunt India.” Medium, Medium, 24 Apr. 2017,

medium.com/@priyamvadagrover/camus-questions-haunt-india-fcfd772e8251.
“Timeline of Major Communal Riots in India.” Anadolu Ajansı, www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-
pacific/timeline-of-major-communal-riots-in-india/1745756.

“Mangalore Pub Attack Case Verdict Is a Win for Hindutva Bullies.” The Wire,
thewire.in/law/mangalore-pub-attack-all-accused-acquitted.